Are crazy folk better at poetry

[milo]

='bena' pid='141559' dateline='1380602176']
Milo, that woman had dementia. I was institutionalized for a while, so I'm not jumping on the "hey I'm crazy"
bandwagon...I'm kinda serious. But here's a short poem I wrote about it.....I apologize in advance for the thread hijack, but it is pertinent.

that woman was crazy.

I know at least 10 people who were institutionalized and every one was sane. And it's not a slight against you, just mentioning it.
Ink

[ChristopherSea]

...and many insane are at large! Ghosts, ghouls, vampires ain't nuttin' (no slight against you milo), but the psychopath scares me to death!

[milo]

...and many insane are at large! Ghosts, ghouls, vampires ain't nuttin' (no slight against you milo), but the psychopath scares me to death!

True psychopathy (not the over prevalent diagnosis of the mentally defective) is scary and fortunately rare. Where I come from, there were 2 "psyche" centers across town from each other. One had barbed wire around it and one didn't. When the state cut funding, they just closed the doors of the one and released everyone to the streets. Not the other, the one with the barbed wire. They found funds for that one . . .

Also, it can't be a slight against me, I am in the minority, the rare, the perfectly sane.

[ChristopherSea]

...and many insane are at large! Ghosts, ghouls, vampires ain't nuttin' (no slight against you milo), but the psychopath scares me to death!

True psychopathy (not the over prevalent diagnosis of the mentally defective) is scary and fortunately rare. Where I come from, there were 2 "psyche" centers across town from each other. One had barbed wire around it and one didn't. When the state cut funding, they just closed the doors of the one and released everyone to the streets. Not the other, the one with the barbed wire. They found funds for that one . . .

Also, it can't be a slight against me, I am in the minority, the rare, the perfectly sane.

I was kidding and it was about slighting ghouls, vamps and ghosts.

[milo]

I was kidding and it was about slighting ghouls, vamps and ghosts.

don't kid about ghouls, Chris, that is some scary shit.

On a different note, do you think it would be beneficial to merge this thread with our other 30 or so "I am crazy and I am a poet . . " threads on this site?

[ChristopherSea]

I was kidding and it was about slighting ghouls, vamps and ghosts.

don't kid about ghouls, Chris, that is some scary shit.

On a different note, do you think it would be beneficial to merge this thread with our other 30 or so "I am crazy and I am a poet . . " threads on this site?

Ha ha... Yes, that's a good idea! Sweep up the clutter.

[bena]

bena, so you go and post a poem I'd like to critique. It's Pavlovian I swear.

You can critique it in a pm, I promise not to tell!

[Laura Marx]

Ah, ah - I hope it is not too late for me to reply. I am very excited about this sort of question.

The major thing I want to say is this: taking medication is a radical change in consciousness. You are doing this to change your perception, your outlook, etc. You are doing this for that explicit purpose. And your poetry will reflect that. I had schizophrenia for a long time, and I no longer have schizophrenia (not because of pills - different stuff, still medicine - wont go into it here) and my poetry is radically different. My poetry from before is like, well... Insane. And it's fantastic that we have that, even as a record from the depths of madness. In the same way, you know... Syd Barret's 'the Madcap Laughs' is a fantastic album, not because it's any good lyrically or musically - it's not - but because it's the work of someone who really is on the doors of perception, and that's a wonderful document.

I don't know if you know about it, but there's a thing called Outsider Art, which is art made by people on the fringes of society, who cannot contribute to the mainstream art discourse. So far outside of the academies and the galleries. One of the major ones is mental patients - others, prisoners, catatonics, children, Navajo transgirls, whatever, people who are really kept outside society. Even, art from the third world is outsider art to Europeans, relatively. It's well worth getting into - the bible of this is the book 'Outsider Art' by Roger Cardinal.

So, there is plenty to be said for the work of crazy folk. However: look at all of those sane poets. Joyce, Yeats, Hilda Doolittle, Mayakovsky, Ezra Pound, so on... Not necessarily neurotypical, and at least they were eccentric, but they were sane. Right? We don't need to look very hard to prove that people without severely debilitating mental health issues can be good poets. What I am saying is: you have experienced a radical change in consciousness, and your poetry is reflecting this. And you have to approach poetry differently, in the same way you have been approaching everything differently. But it is in no way less poetry, or less good poetry, or less authentic poetry, or less you poetry.

The stuff I wrote when I was deeply schizophrenic is really very different from the stuff I write now. And, I'm really glad for the stuff I wrote back then, yes, but I'm glad I can write from this approach, too. (It's misleading of me to say 'when I was schizophrenic' - I have no positive symptoms, is what I mean. Which is no less miraculous. But I still have some back-mind stuff. You will be the same - the sickness doesn't leave you totally and completely, you're hard wired, you're neurodivergent, it's part of who you are. It's your personality - it's just so you don't struggle with it. 'Cured' and 'diseased' is really a misnomer, here. But, whatever.) Back then it was like, really, looking out into space, at the mountains of madness, and all. Now it's urban and serious and I can really write from my position in life, not just from my delusional, hallucinatory journey into the cosmos. And it's good to have that now, I can really embark on that sort of excavation of the soul. That's an important aspect of poetry that was lost on me before.

So, poetry has changed for you. It does different things. There are new possibilities, to be liberal about it - new opportunities! YOU TOO can be the proud owner of... but it's true! Your mind isn't static, not when you're mad not when you're sane, whatever. Your poetry always goes from thing to thing. Just look at William Blake's early work compared to his late work. The poet who wrote 'How sweet is the Shepherds sweet lot! From the morn to the evening he strays...' later became the poet who wrote 'Sooner murder an infant in the cradle than nurse unacted desires!' That kind of radical change is no different to what you're going through - embody that kind of radical change! Greet this new epoch of poetry with a sneer and smile and quill-in-hand and whatever else. Greet the dawn with incense burning, and all.

[rowens]

Henrietta
she's a mean go-getta
gotta write her a letta

That's pure lyricism.

[Erthona]

The psychiatric profession is at about the same level as medicine was when they thought bleeding was a good response to illness. They pass out SRI's and have no idea about the mechanism. But to answer the initial question. Poetry delves into non-ordinary areas of consciousness, so by definition, most poets would be non-ordinary, often this is confused with being crazy, which may have some validity, but it should not be confused with mentally ill. Generally speaking, a mentally ill person writing poetry is equivalent to having people in love write love poetry...and we know how that turns out. Poets tend to be more aware of things that "normal" people aren't, and it is fairly prevalent that to deal with this sensitivity they tend to abuse substances. People often think substance abuse is a requirement for writing poetry, when it is in fact a response to the poetic temperament. This does not mean I condone substance abuse (it actually closes off inspiration rather opening it up), I merely point out the causal connection in relation to the poet being "crazy". As has been said before, "you would be crazy also if you drank that much". Of course there are no restriction on what kind of person writes bad poetry, as unfortunately there are no restrictions on people who write bad poetry (if you recognize the difference between those two statements you are probably a poet and therefore crazy).

Dale